Spread across Race Street Pier and the newly opened Cherry Street Pier, Festival for the People features dynamic participatory programs and events, sculptures, installations, videos, and banners from October 13 – 28.

In addition, each weekend will have additional programming tied to a thematic focus, celebrating popular analog, digital, and embodied cultures with fairs, talks, installations, and screenings created in collaboration with arts and community groups from across Philadelphia and beyond.

The festival celebrates the rich subcultural forms across Philadelphia, from comics to tattoos to internet culture, while also offering a fun and critical perspective on populism and expanding the public conception of what contemporary art is and can be.

“The Festival for the People is exactly what it sounds like: a festival celebrating the art forms of everyday people. In these fractured political times, it’s important to remember what brings us together as well as to reflect on the forces that divide us,”— Philadelphia Contemporary Artistic Director Nato Thompson

Festival for the People is co-presented with the Delaware River Waterfront Corporation. Support for Festival for the People has been provided by the William Penn Foundation.

— Two interactive sculpture installations in collaboration with the Montreal-based group Creos: Impulse, an installation of seesaws designed by CS Design and Lateral Office, and Prismatica, a group of colorful spinning prisms by Raw Design.

Oct. 14, 5 PMIn Conversation: Emory Douglas & Colette GaiterA dialogue between Colette Gaiter, Professor at the University of Delaware’s Department of Art and Design, and Emory Douglas, Minister of Culture for the Black Panther Party, and the art director and designer of the movement’s newspaper, The Black Panther.